Like Magic
by What's Not to Ship
Summary: Hermione is a cold, intelligent, slightly arrogant, efficient young woman who pretty much has the world figured out. Until she meets Ron Weasley, and her entire life is thrown out of balance. AU (with some Hogwarts elements), some OOC


I turned around, expecting someone behind me. Something had just brushed my shoulder. But no one was there. _Oh, this trick again_, I thought. I turned back around, looking exasperated. And whose face should I see?

"Very funny, Ron, get a-" Then I blinked. I know, it's a minor detail, but I did. And whose face should I see but…no one's. I forgot. Again. Ron's gone. Gone with the wind, I suppose you could say. Without a word to anyone. I knew in my gut that it was so. He was gone. He had left me. Without a word.

I sighed, and trudged on to my classes. That's all I seem to be doing again these days. Trudging, I mean. I trudge everywhere. I wake up in the morning, trudge to the bathroom, to the kitchen, to the car, to my classes…you get the idea. I didn't used to. There was this one time in my life when I didn't use to trudge everywhere. What does that word even mean? Trudge? I can't explain it. I know how to do it, obviously, but I can't see myself teaching anyone how. But someone was able to teach me, without any words, how not to trudge everywhere in my life.

I sat down in my assigned seat in Charms. We received our graded in-class writings back from. Professor Flitwick. It's good. Five out of five. Full marks. Not bad. I know exactly what he wants in a paper, and that's always exactly what I give him. Nothing more, nothing less. I could always tell what people wanted from me. It wasn't exactly hard to tell. Some wanted "friendship," which was easily expendable. Some wanted a confidant, a secret-keeper. Not too difficult to maintain. Some wanted to take advantage of my intelligence (which I didn't consider anything special). Those were the ones I steered clear of.

Only Ron didn't want something from me. When I first met him, I was sure he too, like everyone else, wanted something from me. He talked to me, smiled, laughed at stuff I said. I reciprocated his actions and created an air of comfort. Friendliness. After that, I simply waited for the request, ready to consider it before granting or denying it. But it never came. He never seemed to want something from me. After a couple of weeks of being pestered and tricked and poked, I finally convinced myself that Ron simply wanted to see my irritated face. I suppose that wasn't too difficult to give, so the next time he poked my shoulder in the hall, I turned around, glaring.

"Ron!" I raised my voice slightly and added a twinge of annoyance. _That seems good, for being fake irritate_d, I thought. "Stop bothering me!" Some people stopped in the hallway and stared. I looked at the small crowd as this unfamiliar feeling crept into my face. I felt blood rush to my cheeks and my eyebrows tilt upwards in a concerned expression. I turned and glanced at Ron. He too was wearing an expression I had never seen before.

"Sorry, I'll cut it out," he finally responded. "Talk to you after class, 'kay?" With his eyebrows raised in surprise with a hint of a smirk on his lips, he stalked off down the hallway. That was the first time I trudged. I trudged to my next class- Arithmancy, actually- my mind full of thought, wishing it could slip away for a while and contemplate the possible meaning- meanings?- of the recent events. Logarithms and exponents floated through my ears as my brain went into hyper drive. _First, what happened to me? Why did blood rush to my cheeks? What was that feeling? What was Ron surprised for? Why was he smirking, though slightly? Did I give him what he wanted?_ The thoughts swirled in my head for the rest of the day until the final bell rang. Deep in thought, I didn't hear a voice ringing through the hall.

"Hey!" Ron's breath was heavy as he slowed down to my walking pace. "Hey," he repeated. "Can we talk, like somewhere a little more private?" My mind raced at these words. Yet, at the same time, I wonder now if perhaps my heart began to race faster than my mind.

We walked outside to the deserted courtyard. Everyone had gone back to their dorms or common rooms, or else set up camp in the hallway to avoid the bitter wind. We stopped walking and he leaned against one of the stone posts. There was a brief silence; then he took a breath and began.

"Sorry about what happened in the hallway today," he apologized, anticipation clearly evident in his eyes.

"Well…what happened, exactly?" I responded, hoping to get his perspective on the day's perplexing events.

"Well, you did kinda raise your voice a bit too loud, but I had no idea it bothered you that much," he explained, " I never meant to embarrass you." Embarrass me? What did he mean?

"Huh?" I replied dumbly, confused by what he just told me.

"Well, you turned bright red, and I was a bit surprised, seeing as you never gave any indication of being annoyed before…"he trailed off and stared at the ground.

"But…but..weren't you trying to irritate me? Wasn't your goal accomplished?" my mind began to speak for me.

"Um…I don't get what you mean by "my goal accomplished," he said with air quotes, "but yeah, I guess I was trying to annoy you." He grinned sheepishly.

"But I-I felt something I never felt before-and my blood rushed to my cheeks-and-" I replied, starting to feel a little flustered.

"Wah- you mean you've never felt embarrassed before? I bet every other girl in this school would be so jealous of you right now. Well, not anymore seeing as…but seriously? You're never been embarrassed before?" he rambled a little awkwardly. I shook my head silently, staring at the ground as my mind spun in circles, absorbing what I had just learned. For a moment , I saw red. He embarrassed me for the first time in my life, and he wanted me to let it slide? I took a deep breath. Told myself to chill. After a short while, I finally composed myself and spoke.

"No, actually, I've never embarrassed myself before. It was a new sensation, so I guess I can thank you for letting me experience that. No worries," I smiled as calmly as I could while my heart pointlessly continued hammering in my chest. There was an awkward silence, then we both laughed and went on our ways- him to soccer practice, me to the computer lab. But I didn't really accomplish anything afterschool that day in the computer lab. My mind continued to attempt to comprehend the reason behind my steadily increased heart rate. It hadn't stopped even after I cleared the misunderstanding. It only seemed to stop when my mind wasn't thinking of Ron.

_Huh… Strange._

Weeks passed on as I picked up the habit of trudging everywhere. Almost like stomping, one foot falling after another, heavy from carrying the tumultuous storm that continued to rage through my mind and heart. Confused and mystified, I never was able to define a reason for that rapid increase of heartbeats whenever Ron was in the vicinity. We kept up with each others lives, as friends, or maybe just classmates would. Conversing in the halls or at our lockers, after school outside the gym, and on the empty Quidditch field, we steadily built a solid, friendly relationship. I merely compelled myself to learn about whatever he was interested in, to gain knowledge of his interests, so to make comfortable conversation. I had yet to figure out what exactly he wanted with me. He acted exactly the same as he did before 'the incident,' leading me to think I was wrong in my judgment. I, wrong? Impossible. Every observation I had made so far in all my life had all been absolutely correct. So why, I wondered, did my eyes follow him down the hall unconsciously, to the extent that I would be able to describe his current outfit in detail to another at any given in-school moment? Why was I unable to define, characterize, and categorize exactly what was happening to me? I was stumped. I knew something about me was different, but I remained unable to figure out what.

Meanwhile, Ron gradually resumed irritating me in the hallways. After giving me a month's gap, he carried on his little jibes, all in good fun. And I let him. I was far too perplexed with my recently picked up habits to wonder what this intriguing individual wanted from me.

One afternoon, as I waited for my parent to pick me up, I pondered the days events and realized that I had failed to trudge anywhere that day. The heavy feeling in my mind had been shadowed with an unfamiliar feeling in my chest. Rather light and fluttery, the state of my heart reflected little about the day's outcome. I had just shared a quick word with Ron in the hallway, I had come outside-without trudging-and I leaned against the wall, waiting. I was positively perplexed.

I noticed something strange the next week. Last week, actually. It was a nice sort of strange, not the absurd kind. Between my heart's strange palpitations and my eyes' odd magnetism, I noticed that Ron went more out of his way to meet me in the hall that week. Despite having to run and catch up to me, breathless, Ron made an noticeable effort to speak to me more often that week. Parallel to this occurrence also came the disappearance of my 'trudging syndrome,' as I had begun to call it. Everything felt lighter, looked lighter, and Ron was who I had to thank for it. I felt as though the answer to my predicament was in plain sight, and I just lacked the ability to see it. Ron had something, I just couldn't figure out what. However, next Monday, everything changed.

I walked into school on Monday morning with- strangely- a smile on my face. It felt different than any other Monday. Lighter, almost. I sat through first period, wondering if I could catch a quick word with Ron in homeroom, which came next. I strode into homeroom, my eyes already searching. _Oh,_ I thought, _He isn't here yet_. I waited. Halfway through homeroom, and there still remained but one empty desk I the room. I still waited.

Near the end of homeroom, my teacher announced, "Oh, and those of you who are friends with Ron, he wanted me to let you know that his family's been transferred out-of-state, and that he'll miss you a lot- oh!- and that he'll email you if he gets the chance. See you tomorrow, class!" Ron didn't know my email. Atleast, I didn't think he did. Stunned by the news, feeling heavyhearted, I trudged out of class my mind once again a whirl, filled with a familiar face that was getting cloudier and cloudier by the minute. Trudging to second period, my world spun around me as I tried to get a grip on what just happened. Ron was gone. Okay, so? Many people I once knew moved out of state, or even just to the big city. We lived in a small town here. Lots of people came and went. So, why did this one person's absence affect me so much? Why did Ron have the power to fill my mind like this, to change my outlook on the world, to determine whether I walked to my next class with a smile or if I trudged in gloom? What was this mysterious power?

Sometimes I wondered if Ron did get what he wanted from me. Did I subconsciously offer it to him? Other times I would wonder if he actually even wanted something from me. And yet other times I would wonder if his heart palpitated in accordance to mine, if his eyes followed me like mine followed him. Maybe if I was just able to meet him once, talk to him once, understand this part of myself…But I knew it was impossible. Ron was gone.

I was never able to figure this one issue out. Shoulders brushed me, and I thought they were Ron's. Voices called me in the hall, and I thought they were Ron's. Why did he have to go? In fact, why did he even have to come into my life? I wasn't even able to figure out what he wanted from me. I wasn't able to figure out why my eyes followed him. Why was everything in my mind about Ron a big, indistinguishable cloud? I haven't seen him since that week, and it's almost the end of the year. We're about to graduate. I'm going to a prestigious all-girls school. Maybe I can forget about him there. Maybe everyone won't sound like, or look like, or remind of me of him. Maybe I can be free from this weird trap this one person has set up around my life. But for now, I'm just hoping this strange magic will go away.


End file.
